Goosebumps and Jump Scares

‘Tis the season for frights and scares and good lord, does Little Nightmares 2 offer both in spades.

During my recent time with a preview build for Little Nightmares 2, I literally felt my heart jump on multiple occasions, with plenty of jump scares and just creepy, creepy characters to fulfill anyone’s need for a little Halloween-timed fun.

I went into Little Nightmares 2 a bit blind, having never played the original. So it took some mental adjusting to start the preview with no set objectives and no guidance or direction. However, to its massive credit, Little Nightmares 2 softly sets you in the right direction without shoving you, further adding to the frightening atmosphere, as you’re forced to explore your surroundings to figure out what you must do next.

You’ll do so with only a flashlight and the occasional handy weapon. The preview had me using the flashlight to illuminate potential threats and in a few instances, had me using that same flashlight to keep some disturbingly agile mannequins at bay. In another instance, I used a hammer to beat an enemy to death, or a second death or whatever happens to undead things, and it was gruesomely satisfying.

The blind exploration, coupled with the plethora of spine-chilling backdrop figures, mostly in the form of those (possibly moving and agile) mannequins during my time with the game, left me constantly on edge. Every new room, every mannequin I passed, every pause in action left me constantly scanning the screen, hoping I could catch the next scare before it got me, but I was almost never able to prevent the inevitable startling or outright skip of my heartbeat.

As Mono, the little boy you’ll play as and the one that’s trapped inside the Pale City, you’ll be joined by Six, a little girl in a raincoat, as you traverse this horrifying world. Often times, Six just follows you around, but sometimes she’ll provide instance-specific help, usually helping Mono get somewhere that he wouldn’t normally be able to reach.

I look forward to seeing more of how Six and Mono traverse the world of Little Nightmares 2 and seeing whether this makeshift alliance between the two of them holds up.

The game is great, don’t get me wrong, but the hair-raising fear that I became one with left me uneasy and I grew to hate it in a way that was actually pretty fun. If you’re in the mood for an eerie, fright-filled platformer, I’d recommend checking out Little Nightmares 2 when it drops on February 11, 2021.